(Please don’t ignore this reply–I have A Lot to say after the image descriptions.)
[ID: The first screenshot shows a photo from a news article with a photo of Jack Black. The article is from 2013, and the title reads, “Jack Black to Emcee All-Star Lineup at Autism Speaks Benefit.”
The second screenshot is a tweet from Jack Black reading “where it’s at #LUTB #AutismSpeaks @\beck @\autismspeaks” with a photo of himself and someone else. The date on the tweet is cropped, but it is from 2018.
The third screenshot is a tweet is from Tenacious D (Jack Black’s band), reading “NFT drop goes down Wednesday at 3:30pm PST on @\Makersplaceco!”
The fourth screenshot reads “Description: Hand-drawn by Jack Black and voiced by Jack Black and Kyle Gass. Art and audio from Post-Apocalypto.” /end ID]
For one, the original post shows stuff that is years old. Two, it conflates Jack Black with Sia, and the things they did are WILDLY different. Sia was directly involved in making creative decisions with that atrocious movie, and was directly at fault for everything there. Jack Black, meanwhile, is just supporting a “charity” (in scare quotes because Autism Speaks is atrocious) that is COMMONLY supported by not just celebrities, but people in GENERAL, most of which have NO IDEA how bad it is.
Third, the OP and many of the replies here are acting as though Jack Black is AWARE of the atrocities of Autism Speaks because people replied with angry or upsetting tweets, or @’d him on threads. This is missing the fact that most celebrities do not post to their own twitter–they’re run by social media managers. Even for the ones that DO run their own twitter, they can receive thousands to MILLIONS of notifications in a single day. I know I get overwhelmed if I get five notifications, and I’ve absolutely missed replies on Twitter.
Jack Black likely does not know. I’m not trying to claim he’s some innocent angel–just that he legitimately, in all likelihood, is not aware of what Autism Speaks really is. Unless someone actually sits him down in real life and explains this to him, he probably won’t know.
Fourth, the NFT thing is pretty bad, but once again this might not be something he’s aware of the danger of. I still run into people who just think “oh NFTs are funny collectible pictures.” Not to mention NFT companies like to spread the lies that they’re “environmentally friendly” and a lot of people don’t realize that that’s not the case. Not to mention, he might not’ve even been told they were NFTs–his manager probably just told him “hey, we’re making digital collectibles” with no other information and he probably just rolled with it. On top of all that… NFTs are rapidly falling out of fashion, and any recent NFT projects you’re seeing come to light are ones that the creators couldn’t back out of because they took so long and so much money to produce anyway. They’re going to be gone soon, so I wouldn’t put as much emphasis on it.
The NFT thing, while bad, doesn’t worry me as much as the Autism Speaks thing.
Screaming at people for supporting Jack Black and/or enjoying anything he’s worked on is extremely counterproductive. What needs to be done instead are two things: 1) continue spreading awareness for how bad Autism Speaks is, and 2) find a way to actually get through to Jack Black about how bad this is. I don’t know how this could be done and I am very much open to suggestions, but sending him an @ on Twitter is not the answer here.
Find actual answers to this problem instead of directing your anger at random bystanders.
